STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From newsletter 27th March.

Vignette (study), 34.5 x 61cm. Botanical inks on gesso panel 2022

I’ve got some grreat news.

After a lengthy and meticulous application for an Arts Council Wales grant, I have now received an email saying that my application has been successful. Hurrah!!

The grant is to create a solo exhibition to be shown at Elysium Gallery in Swansea in 2023. It is a large space and I have lots of ideas. I plan to have two painting installations, one with 3-Dimensional work as well as individual paintings and diptychs. The grant will enable me to commission and collaborate with other creatives as well. For example, I’ll be able to get some professional photography of my work a video documenting my process and a sound commission for an installation. It is very exciting and lots of work to do.

More information about the project will be unveiled over time. The exact date is yet to be confirmed with the gallery, I really hope you will be able to come for the opening night or during opening hours of exhibition. It will of course also be documented online, for those who can’t make it.

Oak gall ink and gesso on paper.

I’ve made a start by making some small studies on gessoed paper, board and panel and although when I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work, I’m currently re-reading books ‘In Praise Of Painting’ by Ian MacKeever RA, ‘Agnes Martin’ by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, ‘Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’.

I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online.

Studio table

STUDIO JOURNAL 7

From 13th March 2022 newletter.

I've entered the Void.

I'm piecing scraps of paper, notes, scribbles, rushed doodles, gathered in pockets and bag, stacked in a corner of the studio table. Ideas yet to realise, to consider, to get me back into where I was, what I've been thinking but unable to attend to.

There's been a gap in my studio making….A big gap.

Peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows of one kind or another are normal within a creative practice, I've learnt to navigate these according to their nature. However, I haven't made any paintings since last July (Somewhere to live with my family became THE priority, to get into the 6 year long renovation before winter really hits.).

This feels somewhat like an confession. And it is a painting space to re-enter…hence the Void. Gulp.

I’ve been through the plans chests, deep into the drawing archive. The drawings below are a selection ranging from as far back as 2002 until 2021.

And I’ve started putting layers of gesso ground onto paper and birch ply panel, to ready for working on.

But while renovating and grasping at the void while trusting that all will keep flowing, I’ve been listening to lots of books. I Really recommend this one:

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, by Mary Gabriel.

It’s been a fantastic companion in the studio while I organise the space; fun and insightful.

It really is a remarkable account of life for those who became the New York School in 40’s and 50’s in the U.S., taking over from Paris as the epicentre of modern art. It’s told utterly in the context of politics, depression, war, American art tradition, the oscillating positions of women in society and the propaganda around this. It provides a much needed documentation and redressing of some of the major female Abstract Expressionists putting them in their rightful position, at the heart of the movement.

These women really led the way for where we are now and what an inspiration they are.

STUDIO JOURNAL 6

From 19th February2022 newletter - I’m behind with posting!

I’m on a complete shift around and sort out in my studio - changing the space and trying my best to practice the discipline of not getting distracted. As I move sketchbooks and notebooks, getting distracted is an easy place to find myself. It’s interesting but the task at hand just takes longer and causes tiredness of brain.

My studio already has two high stacked piles of drawings look back on, to refocus, to remember, to reignite, to move on from. It is also a framing studio at the moment, in preparation for Welsh Art Week next month.

However…I allowed myself a quick glimpse, one page, a random page, from a notebook circa 2002 - very hastily written by the looks of it

‘Painting is but another word for feeling’ , John Constable (1776-1837)

‘When pictures start to tell stories, boredom enters in’, Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

I’ve never been one for narrative paintings yet behind each painting is a story.

STUDIO JOURNAL 5

From 6th February 2022 newsletter.

I came across this quote/idea the other day on the word impossible, I thought I’d share it with you.

It changes it completely.

“Impossible” has a meaning that imposes huge limitations. But if we split it into two words, it changes that limitation into opportunity. One that we have power over because … I’m Possible.

Impossible Is Nothing.

Mich Bondesio

Studio journal 4

I've got a little box of watercolour tubes that I've had sitting around for a few years. My father-in-law gave them to me, his father was a painter. I, or perhaps they, have been waiting for the right time.

I've found it difficult to get motivation moving these last two weeks. It is far from a usual problem. Perhaps there's the overwhelm of moving house and trying to clear a pathway into my studio where things have been strewn amidst the chaos. Plus the bliss of finally being in a house and wanting to slack out on the sofa.

I did something I've often done when I don't know how to get started. I went to the sea. I packed my special off-piste snowboarding rucksack - used for day long adventures. It helps me to create intention of letting go and exploring what comes up. Off to find a wild, windswept, isolated beach I did.

I packed a little portable set of watercolours. Perhaps the time is right now to explore watercolour but…note to self to not drift too far into the allure of what they can do - the pooling, the reticulation - not make 'watercolour paintings' per se but to use them in my own way. For this, they seem a good quick sketching tool.

The morning started with a thick freezing fog at home, the journey to the sea opened out and the long steep walk down brought a pool of sunshine to where I positioned my belongings on a flat boulder.

The day was beautiful.

The sea was calm, small waves dolloped the shoreline dragging pebbles away with them. Such a beautiful sounds that makes you sit very still and Listen. Out at sea cloud was low and colours were limited to gorgeous greys and aqua of the small cresting waves.

By the end of the day I was watching the freezing fog roll in and envelop the beach.

Play the above video to watch waves dolloping onto the shore in fog.

Thank you for reading this. If you would like to follow this studio journal and sign-up to my newsletter for exhibition updates, inspiration and available work you can sign up at sarahpoland.co.uk/subscribe I send it out some Sunday’s at 11am.

And do please reach out through the contact form if you have any questions.

Studio journal 3

Souvenance

I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions’ ______________________________________ Diane Di Prima, _____________Beat Poet (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020)

And so too the painter.

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Diane Di Prima was a poet and writer of the American Beat Generation.

Back in 2002 I went to Western Canada to meet a great friend of mine, to snowboard as she finished her season and to travel together up the West coast. We stopped a night or two in Tofino, B.C. I wasn’t sure at the time why I didn’t join her on a whale watching boat trip, but I drifted into a lovely bookshop, sat on the floor to browse a shelf and came across this wonderful book. Actually, it pretty much jumped out at me.

Some years prior, on a U.S. trip, someone I met recommended Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Another great book for that time in my life and it turned out, took the same route that I did. That was my introduction to the Beat Generation and so finding this book focusing on the Women was very exciting.

They are the reason I drink coffee - Coffee And Writing Go Together.

For me, a coffee taps into this culture and also our European cafe culture, particularly of the 50’s and 60’s. I Love the B&W photographs from these era’s, the starkness, the contrasts.

One of my favourite poems ever is Rant by Diane Di Prima - it is in this book. I also discovered Jay DeFeo and her incredible work The Rose, a 2,300 lb. painting which she spent eight years making.

The Beats in turn lead me to Patti Smith, punk poet, writer, rock musician’s thoughts and writing.

So this was the reason I missed the whale watching!

Jay DeFeo working on The Rose, 1958–66,
in her Fillmore Street studio, NYC 1960. Photo: Burt Glinn.

I’ve just gotta squeeze in a favourite photo…one of British painter Sandra Blow who lived in St. Ives for many years. I love Roger Mayne’s images of the artists there. The other Michael Gaca, director of Belgrave St. Ives took of me at Carn Galva after a bush fire in 2006. It was in my 2006 exhibition at the gallery Tuath (click for catalogue).

Sandra Blow (1925-2006) in her studio 1959 by Roger Mayne (1929-2014)

Sarah Poland 2006 by Michael Gaca